No one knows how they will react to the death of a loved one, especially when it is the sudden death of a young person, a loss that they have not been able to assimilate, that does not even leave them the comfort of thinking that they enjoyed a long and full life. Then comes the stage of mourning, which everyone endures as best they can. Sometimes looking in the mirror of those who have experienced the same thing, listening to or reading their experiences, helps.
The experience of others brings, if not consolation, at least companionship, at least a form of recognition or projection that encourages us to move forward and, more importantly, to draw something constructive from this failure. To this end, historian Robert Richardson (Milwaukee, 1934-2020) approaches the essay I saw you leave (2023; Errata Naturae, 2024, with translation by Teresa Lanero).
The author, renowned biographer of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau – which was translated by Thoreau. Biography of a wild thinker– and William James, realized that his three references suffered a traumatic loss in their youth: the deaths respectively of their wife, their brother and a very dear cousin. However, after hitting rock bottom, not only did they get back up, but their thinking, their lives, grew and strengthened in new ways that were essential to their intellectual contribution to the world. Richardson, who also lost a brother too early, approaches them with this perspective which focuses on their human dimension and analyzes their way of living.
Emerson: science as a new religion
Before laying the foundations of a transcendentalism which puts nature in the place of the sacred, Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, 1803 – Concord, 1882) was a utilitarian ecclesiastic who did not neglect his religious obligations even after the death of his wife. The latter, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 19, wanted to be a poet, a dream that he had also cherished. After his loss, and despite his worst condition, Emerson continued to serve as a spiritual guide to others. We know that work can become a refuge during a bad personal moment, but the characteristics of one’s work also led to another consequence.
Alongside the biblical studies he knew well, Emerson read extensively into what was then considered ancient science, which caused a clash of ideas: in his writings we can see a step from the preached affliction of the Ecclesiastes and the discovery of a source of life. . of inexhaustible nature. In the natural world, the real and the sacred are identical; Each living being participates in the whole, there is no all-powerful God imposing his dogma vertically. Nature is changing, integrating and harmonious. He welcomes, he does not preach. Faced with Eucharistic communion, Emerson proposes a “tiny communion”, understood as cultivating the links between us, and between us and the environment.
Emerson carried out a reconstruction “not by Christianity, but by action proportional to nature”, as the author explains. His new vision “comes not from heaven, but from a saved and regenerated natural world,” where the human being has a domain “as immense as his own, although it has not so magnificent a name.” As a result, he resigned from his position to become a naturalist, although Christianity continued to accompany him in the social sphere of the community. He rediscovered what his friend Thomas Carlyle described as “his integrity, his harmony with himself.” His work, in addition to highlighting the benefits of outdoor life, invites you to learn to think for yourself: “Your own heart teaches you the same truths as it does,” he writes.
Thoreau: the individual dies, nature lives
John, the older brother of Henry David Thoreau (Concord, 1817 – 1862), died a few days after cutting himself while shaving due to tetanus. Around this time, Emerson’s son, a very close family friend, died. The texts of Thoreau, a fervent journaler and letter writer, were suddenly interrupted. Depressed, he feels strange in his body, human insignificance in the face of the immensity of nature stuns him, the world appears to him like an abyss. However, it doesn’t take long to put a spin on this thinking, which involves replacing individualism with a strong commitment to connection and belonging.
“In society we do not find health, we find it in nature,” he writes. “I have lived sick most of the time because I am too close to myself. » Connection with the environment, the only source of a “true and joyful life”, is its remedy. The environment implies the natural environment, but also the people, both those who have also known the deceased – and who therefore retain something of them – and those who are about to meet. Thoreau claims friendship, bonds chosen and capable of broadening at any moment, of being enriched through treatment, in the face of the imposition of blood.
Loss hurts because we view each individual as irreplaceable. As soon as we understand that in nature definitive death does not exist because the ecosystem is in constant renewal, we can heal. Nature is not hostile, but kind; It makes us part of it, we are part of the cycle. This perspective allows him to find another direction and develop a resilience which will be fundamental in his work. And, although he is primarily known as a naturalist, his philosophy embraces humans first: “True courtesy is hope and trust in others,” which is why “we must treat ourselves or ourselves esteem not for what we are, but rather for what we are. what we are for what we are capable of being.
James: the human capacity to adapt
For William James (New York, 1842 – New Hampshire, 1910), saying goodbye to his cousin Minny Temple marks the end of youth. She was 24 years old; Him, 28 years old. Endowed with a lively character and high ideals, the young woman was much loved by the family (the writer Henry James, William’s little brother, features her in novels like Marguerite Miller And Portrait of a ladyamong others). The future father of functional psychology had to face a void; She had not only lost a cousin, but a brilliant interlocutor with whom she shared many ideas. Grief, however, reveals to him “the resources that we carry within us, the existence of which we would otherwise have been unaware of.”
What we would now call resilience anticipates cognitive-behavioral therapy on the inherent capacity of human beings to change on their own, that is, to adapt to circumstances, to choose freely and to develop new habits. Loss thus has the advantage of discovering a part of oneself, a “creative power”, which strengthens us and of which we would not have been aware otherwise. It all starts with a change in attitude, which must then translate into consistent action. “I will consider life (the real, the good) as an exercise in self-managed resistance against the world,” he concludes. “Life will be built by doing, creating and suffering. »
Although each philosophy has different nuances, all three agree on accepting death without denying it (“Let us give up in advance,” says James. “Even if the truth is bitter, it is better to know it than not to not know it) and look for another form of anchoring to the world, attentive to what is permanent – living nature, human relationships, the inner will – so as not to be overwhelmed by the ephemeral condition of the individual. As if that were not enough, they rendered a service to humanity by writing down their knowledge; an example of what we call in English a blessing in disguisetake advantage of what seems at first glance to be misfortune.
Interestingly, or not so much, Richardson wrote the book a year before his own death (according to Megan Marshall, author of the prologue and his disciple, he was not ill and could not have predicted it). A work which opens new doors to research: instead of an academic essay or a usual biography, he proposes the method which he defines as “documentary biography”: he goes through personal writings (letters, diaries) of the protagonists and those of their loved ones to focus on their lives, in order to suggest links between the character and the reader. “You should not only read what they wrote, you should also look at how they lived,” he says. Since nothing human is foreign to us, it is still possible today to draw inspiration from it to be reborn.
